With a fluid ease. Colter climbed down the sail’s internal ladder, ducked into the control room, and began to make his way aft, without even bothering to take off his parka. Inside the ship, the noise of the fracturing ice was further amplified, and the deck was beginning to vibrate with the resulting shock waves This vibration intensified as the captain rushed into the engine room and approached the potbellied, Tshirted figure, working on the damaged pump with a large wrench.
“Chief, I’m afraid I’m going to have to order you to suspend your repair effort. The lead we picked to surface in is rapidly closing in on us, and I have no choice but to take us under.”
“So that’s what all that infernal noise is about,” observed the grease-stained chief engineer. “And here I thought it was the hordes of hell playing a little Arctic lullaby on the Defiance’s hull. I’ll have this gear stashed and secured in five minutes, sir.”
“Thanks, Chief,” returned the captain as he turned to head for the control room.
Noting that there wasn’t the merest hint of complaint in the chiefs response, even though his work was now to be doubled. Colter passed through maneuvering and climbed up to the deck above. It was as he hurriedly crossed through the wardroom that he realized the noise of the fracturing ice could no longer be heard. This fact was most apparent as he climbed back up to the sail and was met only by the incessant howling of the wind and the excited voice of his XO.
“It stopped, Skipper!”
“So I’ve noticed, Al. It looks to me like those pressure ridges have diminished some.”
“They have, Skipper. And not only that, the ice actually seems to be receding.”
Colter looked out to the ever-widening channel of open water that surrounded them and cursed angrily.
“Damn it! And I just got through telling the chief to close up shop.”
“You never know, Skipper. The ice might just start moving in once again.”
Colter considered this observation and shook his head.
“I don’t think so, Al. As far as I’m concerned, this polynya is as good as any other. So I’m going to call the chief and have them start up again.”
“Whatever you say. Skipper. I’ll get him on the horn for you.”
As the XO bent over and fumbled for the handset with his mittened hands. Matt Colter stared out at the ice pack. Nothing was as dangerous as a captain who had trouble making up his mind. This was the quickest way to lose a crew’s confidence, and once this occurred, a successful command was all but impossible.
Yet an officer also had to be open to the constantly changing variables that influenced a decision, and had to be unafraid to change his mind when new facts were presented to him. Thus, Matt Colter had few reservations as he closely cupped the intercom to his lips and informed the Chief to resume the repair effort.
During this entire sequence of events, the two senior officers were all but oblivious to the industrious efforts of the vessel’s radio man. Locked deep within the bowels of the Defiance, behind an acoustically padded, sealed doorway. Petty Officer Jules Thornton was about to initiate his second consecutive duty shift. Though a junior rating was all set to relieve him, Thornton would have none of it. Well aware of the unique nature of their mission, the Chicago native wanted to spend as much time as possible monitoring the recently activated receiver.
This process was especially important now that they were on the surface. At long last the antenna had been fully extended, and he could begin listening for the homing beacon that had sent them up to these frozen waters.
Because the cockpit voice recorder they had been sent to retrieve was Soviet in origin, there was still some question as to the exact frequency it would be transmitting on. Thus Thornton was forced to monitor a wide variety of channels in the hope that the proper one would eventually be chanced upon.
With a pair of bulky headphones covering his ears, the senior radioman hunched over his console. As he routinely flipped through the frequency selection knob, he closed his eyes in order to focus his attention solely on the static-filled signals that were being sucked into the receiver.
For as long as he could remember, radios had always fascinated him. As a Cub Scout he had built his own crystal set, and by his eighteenth birthday Jules was a licensed ham operator. To further follow his fascination, he got a job at an FM radio station based in Glenview, Illinois. There he could indulge himself to his heart’s content on a wide variety of excellent equipment, the upkeep of which was his responsibility.
It was during a radio interview that he met a commander stationed at the nearby Glenview Naval Air Station. Already looking for additional challenge, Jules followed up on the officer’s invitation and visited the base on his first day off. As it turned out, the sophisticated radio gear he was soon introduced to was the type of equipment he had always dreamed about. And a week later he had enlisted, and was soon in basic training.
Jules picked submarine duty because communications were such a vital part of such a warship’s operations. The very nature of seawater refracted and diffracted the majority of radio signals sent into it. Since only signals of a very low frequency could penetrate the depths, the systems were geared to utilize these. To cover depths of up to fifty feet, the VLF — very low frequency — bands were put into use, while deeper operations necessitated the use of the ELF (extra low frequency) channels. Since submarines desired to initiate their patrols as deep as possible to avoid detection, these latter ELF bands were ideal.
Yet there was one major problem: such frequencies transmitted data at a very slow rate, with some three-letter codes taking up to fifteen minutes to go from sender to receiver.
In addition to land-based communications, the submarine could also be contacted by TACAMO, take charge and move out, a Lockheed EC-130A aircraft that served as an airborne relay station. In the wake of such a plane trailed a six-and-a-half-mile-long antenna that could broadcast on a variety of wave lengths. Communications buoys were yet another method of establishing contact, and could be dropped from a passing ship or a suitably equipped aircraft.
While in Navy radio school, Jules learned about an experimental system that could someday revolutionize his chosen field. This technology used blue-green lasers to penetrate the ocean’s depths. Such a communications system was dependent upon a considerable power source, and it was hoped that this problem could be solved by basing the transmitters on land and using a space-based satellite to reflect the signal back down into the sea.
Though his current duty didn’t involve any such exotic, high-tech machinery, it was stimulating nonetheless. For somewhere on the surrounding icepack, lay the wreckage of a plane that had been carrying the Premier of the Soviet Union. And the key to finding this debris was the emergency signal being broadcast from that aircraft’s black box. The entire world was anxiously waiting for this device to be recovered and analyzed so that the cause of this tragic crash could be determined. Jules was quite aware of the importance of his present assignment, and applied himself diligently.
It was on a pure hunch that the twenty-four-year-old petty officer switched the dial over to the ultrahigh frequency bands. Such a channel was infrequently used, especially by emergency equipment. Yet knowing the Russians’ paranoia when it came to such matters, Thornton figured it would be just like them to assign such a band to the cockpit voice recorder’s transmitter.
A throaty blast of static immediately met his ears, and as he reached out to activate several filters that he had available to him, a barely audible, high-pitched tone arose from the clutter. Unlike any signal that he had ever received before, the alien tone seemed to pulsate with a throbbing regularity, and he was certain that it was man-made and not an atmospheric anomaly.